


listen to your heart

by zmk



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 11:56:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18570973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zmk/pseuds/zmk
Summary: a (long) drabble about eve's thoughts on villanelle.





	listen to your heart

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not even ashamed at the title.

she’s a psychopath, eve tells herself. repeats it like a mantra, because it’s true, because she is, and forgetting would be dangerous.

but there are moments, when it would seem -

there are moments. there are moments when something cracks, when something shows, when she seems like something less - something more - something human.

there are moments. they stick in eve’s head, like an old film flickering from a projector, never stopping, and she can’t quite bring herself to look away.

there are moments, like:

konstantin said _don’t break my heart_ and villanelle, villanelle said, _don’t break mine_. and she snapped her eyes to eve and said _you either_.

that entire scene. moment after moment. it plays in eve’s head, a sequence of events, music, horror, and she can’t look away. she can’t not look. that scene. villanelle’s eyes. there was so much, there, in each moment. eve wants to go back to it, wants to dissect everything, wants to relive it, wants to understand. wants to know.

and then -

eve tries not to think of what came after.

(the apartment. champagne bottles smashed. there’s a joy in destruction. there’s a joy in ruin. eve finds that joy and relishes it. it’s beautiful in a terrible way. and villanelle - villanelle was unexpected.)

eve tries not to think of paris.

(unexpected: the way she wasn’t angry. wasn’t annoyed. was fascinated, maybe, more than anything else. there was a strange - and this is what eve doesn’t want to think about - domesticity in villanelle’s reaction. but villanelle is not domestic. villanelle is a psychopath. a killer. villanelle is dangerous.)

eve tries not to think about any of this when she’s lying in bed with her husband asleep beside her, staring up at a ceiling, feeling so much and nothing at all.

(dangerous. villanelle is dangerous. was dangerous. dangerous in the way she sat there and listened and eve was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, never expecting that she would be the one to drop it until she did. dangerous in the way she reacted to eve’s confession. what had eve expected? had she hoped for that? dangerous in the way she sank into the bed and cradled her gun like it wasn’t a gun at all, but a soft toy. like she was a child, lost, confused, and her gun was the vestige of a life when she was not lost. when she was not confused. dangerous in the way she’d said stay. dangerous in the way she’d reached out and trailed a finger through eve’s hair: gentle. soft. entirely not dangerous. and yet the most dangerous creature eve’s ever come across. dangerous in the way she’d inched forward, dangerous in the way she’d reassured eve, dangerous in the voice she’d used, dangerous. dangerous. dangerous.)

eve doesn’t think about any of this.

except for all the times that she does.

the moments stick in her head, a reel that flickers and never fast tracks but always comes back to the snippets that catch in eve’s mind. snippets like: did villanelle let her pull a knife on her? was her guard so completely down that she didn’t know?

there is a thrill to every interaction and in particular the paris interaction because eve was always terrifyingly, exhilaratingly, aware that anything she did, villanelle let her do it.

because villanelle is dangerous. because villanelle is almost perfect at being dangerous. because villanelle anticipated the knife in the kitchen, knew what eve was doing even when eve didn’t entirely -

but in paris. that moment. those moments. they stretch apart and convulse into each other and freeze in time and eve wants to dissect everything she thinks she saw in villanelle. was there surprise? did villanelle know?

there was cockiness. but was the cockiness just that? was there hope?

_you can’t._

eve wants to go back to that moment, retrace it with her eyes the way villanelle traced her hair with her fingers. wants to memorialize the exact cadence of villanelle’s voice. the exact expression in villanelle’s eyes. wants to know exactly what it all meant. what villanelle meant.

two words: _you can’t._

two words: _i can._

and the moments after: _i really liked you_. the intake of breath, the - the - is there a word for the expression on her face? if there is, it’s not psychopathic.

_it really hurts._

(eve agrees. it does hurt. it hurts far too much, far more than it should.)

the gunshots.

the disappearance.

there is so much. there is so much in all of it and eve can barely begin to rationalize any of it.

she tries not to think about paris. she tries to think about the things she understands, the things she can rationalize.

she thinks about bill. villanelle was cornered, except she wasn’t, because villanelle is too smart, too good, too dangerous, to be cornered.

(except by eve. did eve corner her?)

and of course villanelle did not take well to being cornered. or perhaps she did, perhaps she liked it, because there’s a sadistic element to her.

eve knows why villanelle killed bill. it hurts, god, it hurts, but it is rational. she understands the reasoning as well as she could understand any of villanelle’s reasoning.

but she can’t stick to the moments she understands. she tries. she can’t.

another moment: standing in an empty farm road with a car behind her and villanelle on a job. the way villanelle had crested the hill, like an avenging spirit, eve’s heart had caught, had stopped, she’d forgotten how to breathe, because villanelle was beautiful.

villanelle was dangerous and determined and beautiful.

she’s waiting for something, eve said. and eve left the car. and eve approached villanelle.

there was a moment of confusion, wasn’t there? there was a moment when villanelle didn’t understand. when she looked at eve like she was crazy. and there was a moment, after that, when she seemed to appreciate that. eve was doing something crazy, and villanelle liked it.

what did villanelle think? finally, something worth waiting for? maybe villanelle was simply used to finding people boring, predictable, and eve did something that was most definitely neither of those things, and that was enough. that was enough to make villanelle fascinated.

and villanelle pointed her gun at eve. and villanelle pointed her gun at herself. and eve shouted no and there was another moment like the first: something like confusion. something like consideration. and villanelle kissed the gun like it was blowing a kiss at eve, and shot.

and disappeared.

eve runs over these moments in her head. she can’t not. there are a thousand moments she doesn’t know how to process and they’re all revolving through her thoughts and she can’t ignore them, can’t vanish them.

and she doesn’t want to.

villanelle is dangerous. she repeats this. villanelle is dangerous. it is obvious. it should be enough to persuade her to steer clear.

_you don’t want to know._

_of course i do._

but. there is something else to consider. something else worthy of a moment of confusion, of a split moment of not-knowing. it is something that is not obvious, that has not been obvious for far too long. eve wonders whether villanelle thinks about it, too, whether she thinks about these moments the way eve does.

the thing is: eve is dangerous, too.

perhaps the most dangerous thing is not villanelle. it is not eve, either. perhaps the most dangerous thing is what happens when they are together. a chemical reaction: combining two kinds of danger. creating an entirely new strain.

there is beauty in destruction. joy in ruin.

love in danger.


End file.
